Knowledge workers, teams and organizations routinely work with a large and complex array of information. This includes e-mail messages, instant messages, chats, discussion postings, calendars, contact and to-do lists, documents, photos, maps, and database records. This information also includes tacit knowledge and expertise that resides only in people's heads. The average knowledge worker interacts with several dozen information types, hundreds of Web sites, and dozens of different applications. Existing information systems are focused mainly on data, rather than on relationships between data. There is a growing need to enable applications and users to see how various types of information are related across different information systems and locations. However, there is no tool for connecting, managing and sharing this information in a unified way.
The growth of the Internet, as well as the increasing amount of information it contains, are leading to serious problems for many computer users. In particular, they are leading to a problem referred to as “information overload” in which parties are overwhelmed by more information than they can effectively process, navigate, search, track, respond to, utilize, cope with, or manage given limited time and resources.
A related problem is “information complexity” in which, due to the sheer volume of information choices on the Internet, and its disassociated nature, is making it overly difficult to locate particular desired information when it is needed. Another related problem is “dis-integration” that arises due to incompatible or nonstandard information and services, which leads to software and service incompatibilities, as well as obstacles to processing and managing information effectively. Another problem is “spam” that arises when Internet participants receive unsolicited, unwanted, or irrelevant information from other parties on the Internet. An additional problem that is related to spam is “lack of targeting” which arises because information providers such as publishers, advertisers, and marketers are unable to effectively distribute their information to appropriate, interested parties, due to lack of information about the interests and policies of those parties.
Another related problem that is also related to spam is called “lack of personalization” which arises when parties on the Internet are unable to effectively subscribe to, filter or control the information they get from others. Another problem is “lack of privacy control” which results because Internet participants are unable to effectively control what information about themselves is shared with or by other parties on the Internet. Yet another drawback is “information deficit” that results when parties are unable to find, or do not receive, the information they need or are relevant to, even though it is available somewhere on the Internet or even on their own computers.
These problems, and related problems, are becoming serious obstacles to knowledge work, commerce, collaboration, publishing, marketing, advertising, search, communications and communities. In particular these problems are reducing the productivity of Internet participants. Parties must spend increasing amounts of time and resources searching for information they seek, trying to ensure that they receive information they want from others, trying to block or delete unwanted information received from others, responding to information they receive from others, managing and organizing information they want, tracking changes to information of interest to them, trying to distribute relevant information to others appropriately and trying not to mistakenly distribute unwanted or irrelevant information to others. With the expanding and pervasive use of the Internet and its increasingly central role in relationships, interactions and transactions of all kinds, those entities that provide content and/or Internet software tools and services are searching for and implementing ways to solve the above problems. However, attempts to solve these problems face numerous obstacles. Presently the Internet is comprised of many separate infrastructures and software tools that are used for different modes of communication. For example, e-mail communication takes place via e-mail servers and client software applications that communicate via specialized e-mail messaging protocols, yet Web searching for example takes place using search engines and databases that are accessed via Web browser software and Web transaction protocols. Thus, even if one were to solve the problem of information overload for e-mail it would not necessarily solve this same problem for Web searching.
A principal problem stems from present systems' inability to store, route and use meta-data about the data resources that they manipulate. It is therefore a goal of the present invention to provide a comprehensive solution to these limitations, in the areas of information overload, search, sharing, collaboration, communication, transactions, knowledge management, information distribution, and automated and manual manipulation of computer-stored data and resources, allowing information to be connected in meaningful ways.
Using traditional search systems, parties seeking something enter queries that are tested against databases of information that are provided by one or more parties with things to offer. If matches are found, the seekers are notified with links to the appropriate provider. One problem with such systems, however, is that they do not work in reverse; there is no way for providers to locate seekers who want what they offer. Instead, providers must wait passively to be found by seekers. Seekers on the other hand, must do all the work. Another problem is that it offers only search by keyword; there are no mechanisms that support higher-level organization of the information.
Providers who want to be found may resort to marketing in order to reach seekers. For example, many search engines provide an option to buy keyword advertising, enabling providers to market what they offer to seekers who enter relevant queries. Although they do this, they do not enable providers to search for seekers who want what they offer, nor do they help them locate seekers who are not presently searching but are still interested. Thus providers must use external marketing channels such as direct email, banner advertising, paper-based direct mail and other forms of advertising to locate interested seekers. These inefficiencies result in increased transaction costs for seekers and for providers.
The present invention provides a single universal underlying infrastructure for managing information overload, distributing, locating and filtering information between information providers and recipients that works equally well across all types of Internet relationships, interactions and transactions. This single solution can be used to route and filter e-mail and instant messages, search the Internet, share files, publish and subscribe to information, market and advertise, coordinate and collaborate with others, personalize services, engage in online communities, and improve the efficiency of on-line commerce between buyers, sellers and intermediaries.